jude

It is unfair to be made to feel out-of-place/superfluous/unwanted in a place you love, which you've proven yourself integrally a part of, which it would hurt you to leave.

But it is, perhaps, a reminder of the fact that it hasn't been all good, even when you're all brimming with nostalgia and bedecked with rose-tinted glasses/binoculars/telescopes/magnifying-glasses/what-have-you.

Yes, you still love the people you loved one/two/three/five years ago; it still feels amazing to be remembered.

Thirty-wo 'I'm' texts need not be from teeth.

Sophi. mashimas attempting to flirt is creepy as hell.

Bawal chai, bawal dao.

Aristotle was a blind man/scientist who invented the periodic table/Greek all-rounder.

Endnotes and Acknowledgments

I've written my last honours paper today. Barring the possibility of failing, I'm done with my undergrads. It's been a good three years, and some of those days have actually been rather good, as well. I'm not very efficient at the task of personal happiness; I tend to check the teeth of all my gift horses, and get stuck in the eye by enemy spears.

But what does not kill us simply makes us stranger, to quote the Joker (r.i.p, Heath Ledger), and there's no doubt that JUDE encourages strangeness. Or perhaps it's simply that strange people come to the forefront in JUDE. Don't know, can't say, wouldn't make a difference.

I do know I love JUDE with a passion only equal to the way I despise it, sometimes. I have been content here, someetimes I've been ecstatic, at a word, an approving nod or passing smile, at any acknowledgment that my often unacceptable insanities are alright, here.

I do know I've been frustrated that we're often treated as somehow a little less than other batches. Which is probably an unwise thing to articulate, but it's true. Or maybe it's simply that we've been terribly unlucky; we have.

I do know I've realised that I shall never be a nice person, however much I try, but shall always be vicious. But I've learnt to hide it better than I used to, and that's something, at least. It isn't that I'm malicious, but I think I try too little to be civil.

I do know, and this is the best of all these little nuggets of knowledge, that the few friends I have I'm madly in love with, and if I have to leave them I'll be more than a little heart-broken. And perhaps even better is the fact that I feel some strange bond of kinship even with those I am not close to, even with the very few I fail entirely to comprehend.

I do know I'm grateful for these years, and that my first instinct of JUDE as home was in no way wrong. Thank you, everyone.

Renaissance

This blog, as you can see if you so choose to, has been inactive oh these very many months, and it feels a little futile to write this post. But it feels stupid to not write it, too, since all those troubles (and excessive reactions) were lo these many months ago, and the past is another country, and besides the wench... er, has been made amends with.


Anyway, all that said and read, tomorrow is the beginning of my last finals for the undergrads, and there is (one hopes) a very real possibility of it being my last JUDE finals. Which is not to say I did not make a hash-job of my JNU entrance-exam, because I did, but I'm hoping EFLU goes a little bit better. Hell, I'm hoping it goes better than these finals so near-approaching, since I've studied just about nothing, and can't really make myself care.

It's not that the courses suck. Okay, IWE sucks, but that's just one paper, I rather like everything else, even Criticism, though Saussure remains impossible to understand. I just can't stand being here any longer, and yet. And yet it isn't the must-leave-Calcutta fever that's seized some of my friends, it's not even entirely a must-leave-JU thing. Perhaps it's that IX-X, and then XI-XII got me used to the two-year-then-gap system. Certainly UG-III has been dragging from the very start, despite the brilliant courses I've been taught.

Maybe it is simply time to move on, past time to move on. Maybe all this yearning will amount to nothing and I will stay here another two years. I hope not, I really don't want to have to study PoCo ever again, but hoping might well be futile.

But hope springs eternal.

Homecoming

First day in college. Admissions day, really. Turned up, Dad and I, not late but definitely in the nick of time and there was Princess' dad, under the giant shamiana in front of the lobby where all the parents were sheltered (it was raining, or had rained), gesturing at his watch and looking rather disapproving. And, inside, on the coldmarble seats, among half a hundred complete unknowns, Princess herself, proceeding to scold me for being late and not listening to the fact that I really wasn't. She'd been worried, poor kid. And Somdev, somewhre in the periphery. Mandy walking in, a while afterwards, colourful and seemingly-confident while I tried very hard to conceal my nerves. Don't know why, already got in, but that day was scarier than the exams. Prolly because anonymity was lost. And then, inside the Anita Banerjee Hall, a little intimidated by Brinda, who had apparently written a poem in her paper, mechanically filling in an gathering the requisite papers. Pokinh Abhijan while standing in the long line winding from table to table ("How's Bhuto?" "You must be Jaya Mashi's daughter." "Yeah." "Yeah. Talk later."), filling in the fee-book, Princess thankfully within arm's reach. Explaining to Paromita-di, who prolly didn't recognise me, though we'd been introduced less than a month ago, that I didn't have change, would she please wait for a minute, rushing out, not finding Dad, rushing back in and being very grateful that she procrured the change.

Being shunted upstairs by a far-too-bouncy Sreemoyee, bundling in to sit with Sohini, trying to choose e.d's, she on the phone with her mum; shoving over to the other end of the class, where the sign-up sheet had migrated, introducing Sohini and Abhijan, being introduced to Arindam, Tintinda snatching away the sheet before the boys signed up and wandering off.

A. Lal warning us about slacking off; Rimidi, very very blue and larger than life; P.B. guarding his AquaGuard.


Insiya coming in to help break the ice, Anway being older than his contemporaries...

Don't knowhow much I'm leaving out, prolly a lot, but that was a perfect homecoming.

Let's see what happens this 9th July...